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April 22, 2014 11:17 AM

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Category: Photograph Section.

To paraphrase an old expression: “all roads lead to Liège.” Or at least you could get that impression from this astronaut photograph. The brightly lit core of the Liège urban area appears to lie at the center of a network of roadways—traceable by continuous orange lighting extending out into the rural and relatively dark Belgian countryside. For a sense of scale, the distance from image left to right is approximately 70 kilometers (43 miles). The region to the southeast of Verviers includes agricultural fields and forest; hence, it appears almost uniformly dark at night.

The island of Tristan da Cunha is located in the southern Atlantic Ocean—more than 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) from the coastline of Antarctica, approximately 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) to the southern tip of Africa, and more than 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) from the east coast of South America. The island forms part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. The shoreline of the 13 kilometer (8 mile) wide island is marked on most sides by steep cliffs, with lower beach areas on the southern and north-northwestern sides. The island is notable for its bird population and includes important breeding grounds for petrels, albatrosses, penguins, and shearwaters.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) photographed these striking views of Pavlof Volcano on May 18, 2013. The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites.

Situated in the Aleutian Arc about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, Pavlof began erupting on May 13, 2013. The volcano jetted lava into the air and spewed an ash cloud 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) high.

When viewing conditions are favorable, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) can take unusual and striking images of the Earth. This photograph provides a view of an eruption plume emanating from Kliuchevskoi, one of the many active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

For more than a decade, scientists have observed “ship tracks” in natural-color satellite imagery of the ocean. These bright, linear trails amidst the cloud layers are created by particles and gases from ships. They are a visible manifestation of pollution from ship exhaust, and scientists can now see that ships have a more subtle, almost invisible, signature as well.

Data from the Dutch and Finnish-built Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite show long tracks of elevated nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels along certain shipping routes. NO2, is among a group of highly-reactive oxides of nitrogen, known as NOx, that can lead to the production of fine particles and ozone that damage the human cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Combustion engines, such as those that propel ships and motor vehicles, are a major source of NO2 pollution.

The map above is based on OMI measurements acquired between 2005 and 2012.

Category: Data Section. For more than a decade, scientists have... Photo-6006713.81748 - seattlepi.com

Image 8 of 21

Category: Data Section.

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) say 2012 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The ten warmest years in the 132-year record have all occurred since 1998. The last year that was cooler than average was 1976.

The map at the top depicts temperature anomalies, or changes, by region in 2012; it does not show absolute temperature. Reds and blues show how much warmer or cooler each area was in 2012 compared to an averaged base period from 1951–1980. For more explanation of how the analysis works, read World of Change: Global Temperatures.
The average temperature in 2012 was about 14.6 degrees Celsius (58.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.55°C (1.0°F) warmer than the mid-20th century base period. The average global temperature has increased 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880, and most of that change has occurred in the past four decades.

The line plot above shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2011 as recorded by NASA GISS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, and the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom.

The deep drought in the United States that has fueled wildfires, damaged crops, and caused near record-low water levels on the Mississippi River continued through January 2013. Though there has been some relief from a series of winter storms, a pair of satellites operated by NASA show that groundwater supplies continue to be unusually low in many parts of the country.

The maps above combine data from the twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) with other satellite and ground-based measurements to model the relative amount of water stored near the surface and underground.

Category: Data Section. The deep drought in the United States... Photo-6006715.81748 - seattlepi.com

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Category: Data Section.

Occasionally, short-term meteorological conditions merge with ongoing human emissions to produce extreme outbreaks of air pollution. In January 2013, a blanket of industrial pollution enveloped northeastern China. In June 2013, smoke from agricultural fires in Sumatra engulfed Singapore.
In most cases, the most toxic pollution lingers for a few days or even weeks, bringing increases in respiratory and cardiac health problems at hospitals.

Eventually the weather breaks, the air clears, and memories of foul air begin to fade. But that’s not to say that the health risks disappear as well. Even slightly elevated levels of air pollution can have a significant effect on human health. Over long periods and on a global scale, such impacts can add up.

On most days, relentless rivers of clouds wash over Alaska, obscuring most of the state’s 6,640 miles (10,690 kilometers) of coastline and 586,000 square miles (1,518,000 square kilometers) of land. The south coast of Alaska even has the dubious distinction of being the cloudiest region of the United States, with some locations averaging more than 340 cloudy days per year.

That was certainly not the case on June 17, 2013, the date that the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this rare, nearly cloud-free view of the state. The absence of clouds exposed a striking tapestry of water, ice, land, forests, and even wildfires.
Snow-covered mountains such as the Alaska Range and Chugach Mountains were visible in southern Alaska, while the arc of mountains that make up the Brooks Range dominated the northern part of the state.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this view of extensive sea-ice fracturing off the northern coast of Alaska. The event began in late-January and spread west toward Banks Island throughout February and March 2013.

Visualizations of the Arctic often give the impression that the ice cap is a continuous sheet of stationary, floating ice. In fact, it is a collection of smaller pieces that constantly shift, crack, and grind against one another as they are jostled by winds and ocean currents. Especially during the summer—but even during the height of winter—cracks—or leads—open up between pieces of ice.

The play of light on water can reveal overlooked details and nuances to photographers and artists on Earth. The same thing can happen when looking from space.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite looked down on the Canary Islands on June 15, 2013. The Atlantic Ocean has a silvery or milky color in much of the image, the result of sunglint. Sunlight is being reflected off of the ocean surface directly back at the satellite imager, revealing details about the water surface or circulation that are otherwise invisible.

In the image above, wavy, windsock-like tails stretch to the southwest from each of the islands. The patterns are likely the result of winds roughening or smoothing the water surface in different places.

Category: Art Section. The play of light on water can reveal... Photo-6006721.81748 - seattlepi.com

Image 15 of 21

Category: Art Section.

Snow blanketed most of Great Britain in late January 2013, stretching from London to the northern tip of Scotland. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on January 26, 2013. Only some coastal areas and the southwestern part of the island were free of snow when MODIS took this picture. Skies had mostly cleared by the time MODIS acquired the image, but some clouds lingered in the west, casting shadows onto the snowy surface below.

On January 25, The Telegraph reported that the death toll from the storm was in the double digits, some of the deaths resulting from hazardous driving conditions. As of that date, more snowfall was expected, including near-blizzard conditions in parts of Scotland. Forecasters called for rain to follow the snow, with as much as 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) of rain in western Britain.

After maintaining a low simmer for ten months, Italy’s Etna volcano boiled over on February 19–20, 2013, with three outbursts in 36 hours. According to the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, each outburst (paroxysm) featured “emission of lava flows, pyroclastic flows, lahars, and an ash cloud.”

The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured Mount Etna on February 19 at 9:59 a.m. Central European Time, about 3 hours after the end of the first paroxysm. The false-color image combines shortwave infrared, near-infrared, and green light in the red, green, and blue channels of an RGB picture. This combination makes it easier to differentiate between fresh lava, snow, clouds, and forest.

In the image, fresh lava is bright red, as the hot surface emits enough energy to saturate the instrument’s shortwave infrared detectors but is dark in near-infrared and green light. Snow is blue-green because it absorbs shortwave infrared light, but reflects near-infrared and green light. Clouds made of water droplets (not ice crystals) reflect all three wavelengths of light similarly and appear white. Forests and other vegetation reflect near-infrared more strongly than shortwave infrared and green, and so appear green. Dark gray areas are lightly vegetated lava flows, 30 to 350 years old.

In December 2012, NOAA and NASA released a new map of the Earth at night. Built with data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite, this revision to the iconic “night lights” map offered better clarity and resolution than ever before, and much more sensitivity to light.

Among the surprises turned up by the new map, VIIRS found something fishy off the coast of Argentina. About 300 to 500 kilometers (200 to 300 miles) offshore, a city of light appeared in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean (image above). There are no human settlements there, nor fires or gas wells. But there are an awful lot of fishing boats.
Adorned with lights for night fishing, the boats cluster along invisible borders: the edge of the continental shelf, the nutrient-rich Malvinas Current, and the boundaries of the exclusive economic zones of Argentina and the Falkland Islands. The night fishermen are hunting for Illex argentinus, a species of short-finned squid that forms the second largest squid fishery on the planet.

Between November 9–11, 2013, a large iceberg finally separated from the calving front of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Scientists first detected a rift in the glacier in October 2011 during flights for NASA’s Operation IceBridge. By July 2013, infrared and radar images indicated that the crack had cut completely across the ice shelf to the southwestern edge. New images now show that Iceberg B-31 is finally moving away from the coast, with open water between the iceberg and the edge of Pine Island Glacier.

Tropical forests are threatened by many types of farming, ranching, and human activity. One of the best ways to track those threats is through the Landsat series of satellites, developed by NASA and operated by the U.S. Geological Survey. The accessible and free archive of Landsat data makes it possible for scientists to monitor changes in remote landscapes without leaving their offices and labs.

Remote sensing scientist Clinton Jenkins of North Carolina State University had just such an opportunity earlier this year. In July 2013, he received a tip from colleagues in South America about some possible deforestation in the Loreto region of Peru. Jenkins and colleagues then began combing through recently acquired Landsat images for signs of change. Within hours, they found an image with what appeared to be bare ground in previously intact forest east of Tamshiyacu, Peru.